Bitzi's Beau
Bitzi's Beau 1998 VHS # Bitzi's Beau # Arthur's Big Hit # Arthur's Chicken Pox # Buster's Best Behavior # The Law of the Jungle Gym Synopsis by Dave, Comments by Dave. Credit from dwdivastar,,KorraIsBack,,AwkwardLeixia,GeorgeH4Browne,& Jeriah02 ---- Another day of school ends for the afternoon. All the kids head out. Buster meets up with his Mom. She came in the car, and is going to drive him home. (Buster lives far away from school -- We know from #11302 - "Buster's New Friend" that he lives 12 blocks from Arthur's house, and Arthur has quite a way to go to get to school...) Buster and his Mom have a special secret handshake, which goes: up high, down low, in the middle... ...and then they link thumbs, and they laugh and say "away we go". Buster and his Mom drive off in the car. Arthur says that Buster and his Mom are best friends. According to Arthur, they do everything together; Arthur starts citing examples. ;They go to movies together. :Buster and his Mom are at the movie theatre at the Mill Creek Mall. The movie playing is: LITTLE ROBOT MONSTERS: THE MOVIE. From the overhead shot, we can see posters of other movies, including what looks like "Slobbering Idiots" and "Kickball Kids go to Egypt", in other words, the same attractions that were on the posters in #40202 - "Muffy's New Best Friend".'Buster and his Mom are standing in the foyer outside the entrance to the theater. Buster: The animation is terrible, The plot is dumb, and the songs give you a headache.' Mom: That's what we said after the first time we saw it! They head in! They figure that if they see it just once more, they should be cured. :) ;Buster and his Mom do chores, like going grocery shopping together. :They time themselves to see how fast they can get it done. Buster uses his scarf to lasso a package of paper towels from the top shelf. They race to the checkout, and Mom checks a stopwatch: 17 minutes, 54 seconds -- a new record for them. Buster and his Mom do all kinds of things together. We see them having lunch at a cafe. Just then, an ominous shadow of a man looms over Buster. The shadow is all angular, like a bunny or a giant troll. Arthur: All that might change. Buster looks horrified. Buster's Mom turns to look at the shadow, and says that it's "her boyfriend"! * * * Bitzi's Beau * * * Buster and Arthur are watching this unfold at the same time on the television at their respective homes. They're talking on the phone to each other as they're watching. Buster and Arthur have faster reflexes than Bionic Bunny. They each have whipped their Bionic Bunny Alien Detectors out, which are small wallet sized items, which flip open. These have a probe on the end which is pointed at the TV. There is a meter on the detector, marked "Alien" with three zones, and a needle. The three zones read: *Human *Possible *Definite The little girl sends the alien detector's needle into the red "Definite" zone. Buster's and Arthur's detectors begin emitting an electronic "whooop whoop whoop whoop" noise. It's a trap! Buster: (to Arthur, over the phone) She is such an alien. Buster and Arthur realize that Bionic Bunny is in trouble. Arthur and Buster are stunned by this development. Just then, Buster gets a beep from the call waiting. He tells Arthur to hold on while he sees who the other call is from. The other call is for his Mom. Mom answers the phone. When she finds out who it is, she giggles. Mom: Well hello... She giggles and walks off with the phone. * * * At school the next day, Arthur and Buster are at their lockers. Arthur has a bone to pick with Buster: Buster put Arthur on hold, and never came back! Arthur was waiting for 20 whole minutes! Buster's sorry -- the call was for his Mom. She went into her room with the phone, and talked and talked. Buster says she's been acting weird lately. Arthur: How so? Buster's Mom, according to Buster hasn't been acting like her usual self. She's been smiling all the time, and she gets all giggly as well. Muffy is at her locker, only Buster and Arthur aren't really paying attention to her. She overhears their conversation though. She has an explanation. Muffy: Boyfriend! Buster and Arthur turn to Muffy. They don't believe it. Muffy asks if any of the following are the case: Muffy: I rest my case. Buster hadn't considered that! * * * Mr. Ratburn is handing back some assignments. He says that the entire class did satisfactory, with a few exceptions. Buster anticipates another "F". However, when Buster receives his assignment back, the grade on it is an "A"! Buster at first figures that he must have had someone else's assignment handed back to him by mistake, so he leafs through it to the last page. Iit is his assignment after all; there is a big pizza stain on the final page, and Buster recognizes it. Buster never gets such high grades on assignments... * * * At lunch, in the cafeteria, Buster and Arthur are sitting beside each other, eating. Buster suspects that Mr. Ratburn must be his Mom's new boyfriend. Mr. Ratburn must have given Buster an "A" on the assignment so that Buster would like him or something. Arthur thinks that is ridiculous. Buster takes out the assignment from his schoolbooks, which include a book entitled "POE". Buster says he can't remember the last time he got an "A". Arthur and Buster consider this for a second. We've seen the POE book before, back in #12801 - "I'm a Poet". Buster liked the sound of the poems in it. Buster imagines what it would be like to have Mr. Ratburn as his Mom's boyfriend, and imagines a cascade of events. ---- ;He imagines Mr. Ratburn having dinner at home with Buster and his Mom. :There's one piece of pie left. Mr. Ratburn and Buster both want it. Mr. Ratburn says he is thinking of a number between one and ten. If Buster can guess it, he can have the slice of pie. Buster gueses 7. No, says Mr. Ratburn, and tells him the number: 3.14159... Mr. Ratburn continues reciting digits... the number is pi! Pi, pie? Get it? Mr. Ratburn laughs and takes the slice of pie. Buster thinks that's terrible. ;He imagines Mr. Ratburn and his Mom getting married. :In Las Vegas. We see the Las Vegas strip, including such reputable establishments as the garish "TEX HOTEL", the "FULL HOUSE", and the "Tunnel O'Love". Vegas in Arthur's universe looks exactly like we'd expect it too, lots of neon, limousines, etc. Mr. Ratburn and Buster's Mom get married in a chapel with an Elvis impersonator preciding over the ceremony! Elvis weds Nigel Charles Ratburn to Bitzi Lynn Baxter, and then Mr. Ratburn corrects Elvis, noting that the marriage vow sentence (The one that ends with "...until death do you part.") is a run-on sentence. ;Buster then imagines the children. :We see Buster sitting in a chair in the living room. There are three toddlers, the spawn of Ratburn and Buster's Mom. They have rat-shaped heads, but ears like a rabbit. Two of them are boys, and they're brown like Mr. Ratburn, and one is a little girl, with hair, and she's white, like Buster's Mom. These little children are making Buster's life miserable. They pull on his ears and on his shirt, and because they are Mr. Ratburn's kids, they're hyperintelligent/nerdy. They want Buster to read big long books to them in French. Then one of the boys falls down, and breaks his chemestry set, he then shouts out that Buster broke it. ---- Buster comes back to reality, and screams. Behind him, Sue Ellen and Francine stop talking and look up from their lunch. After staring for a second, they go back to their business. Just then, Ratburn comes out of the serving area with his lunch on a tray. He's coming towards Buster and Arthur. Everyone in Elwood City drinks milk, even grownups. Mr. Ratburn's lunch has a carton of 2% milk. Buster wants Arthur to tell Mr. Ratburn that his Mom is ugly and crazy. Arthur says he won't do that. Mr. Ratburn comes past the two boys. Arthur stops Mr. Ratburn, and tells him that Buster's Mom... has a giant lizard that she feeds rats to! Really? Mr. Ratburn says that he used to have a hila monster named "Marty", but that never fed him rats. Mr. Ratburn walks off, commenting that that is "Fascinating". That doesn't appear to have repulsed Mr. Ratburn at all! Buster figures that Ratburn and his Mom are still destined to be wed, and Buster complains to Arthur that now his house will be full of lizards too. Buster sarcastically thanks Arthur. Arthur knows that was a pathetic attempt -- but he couldn't think of anything better on such short notice! Mom is on the phone in her bedroom, just wrapping up a phone call with her mystery boyfriend. She says that dinner on Friday sounds great, but she'll run it by Buster first. Mom puts the phone down, and goes to the door, and opens it. Buster falls into the room. He was leaning against the door, trying to listen in. Buster begs her not to marry Mr. Ratburn, citing that he'll give lots of homework to him, and he'll eat all her pies as reasons. Mom wonders where Buster got that idea from. Her boyfriend isn't Mr. Ratburn! It's Harry Mills. Buster jumps up and down with delight. Thank goodness it's not Ratburn. Mom asks if it's ok if he comes over for dinner on Friday. Buster says sure before realizing something. He stops jumping. Who's Harry Mills? Arthur and Buster are walking along the sidewalk with their baseball gloves. Arthur has a baseball. Buster says that all he knows is that Harry Mills is a sports writer for the newspaper, tells jokes, and loves kids. Arthur thinks he sounds great. Buster says yeah, maybe too great. Buster: Arthur, what if he's... Buster looks around him to make sure nobody is listening in on their conversation. Buster: ...one of them?!?!? Arthur doesn't know what he means. Buster means "What if he's an alien!?!". ---- Buster imagines this Harry Mills character coming over for dinner. Buster, his Mom, and this guy are sitting in Buster's dining room. Harry looks kind of like a rabbit-person, only he obviously not humany, or rabbity, or whatever you call Buster and his Mom, but a robot -- his lower jaw slides up and down when he talks, like a nutcracker, and when he moves, his body makes servo noises.'He's brought a cake for desert. He places a cardboard box on the table. The box is marked "Villenevue", which isn't shocking -- that's just the name of the cake shop. Robot Harry: You'll just love what's for desert! 'He opens the box. It's a cake. Only it is strange. For some reason, there is a round red push button centered on the top of the cake. Robot Harry pushes the red button. Robot Harry: You! 'When he presses the button, green light shoots out the top of the cake. When the beam of light hits the light fixture on the ceiling,. A shower of red light with green spots engulfs the three of them at the dinner table. The three of them are sucked upwards. Harry has teleported the three of them to a spacestation, high above Earth. I haven't checked, but I figure that this is the same spacestation that Buster imagined himself in control of when he imagined himself the villian in Arthur's'' James Hound'' movie in''#20401 - "Arthur Makes a Movie". The ''"Star Wars" type viewport of the Earth is very familiar. Also, the spacestation probably resembles the one in #31001 - "Attack of the Turbo Tibbles". The three arrive on a transporter platform which just sort of looks like a large plate. The sort of plate you eat off of! The robot Harry morphs into one of those lobster/crab aliens. He raises his claws in greeting, deference, reverence, whatever. Lobster-Crab Alien/Harry/Robot/Ratburn: Kodo,my Lord, I bring you two fresh Earthlings. Kodo is seated on a throne/commander's chair on a mezzanine in the station. Kodos fastens a bib around it's neck, a lobster bib, only instead of a picture of a lobster, there's an aardvark person depicted on it, wearing shorts and a T-shirt. It's a "human bib", not a "lobster bib". :) Kodo, however, is the alien who diguised as the girl with the blonde pigtails. She spins around in her chair, gets out of it, and walks down a set of stairs towards the three. Kodo thanks her lackey. Horseshoe being a good name for a crab-person, almost as clever as Ratburn for a rat person. Buster and his Mom scream.---- Buster's scenario sounds unreasonable to Arthur. Arthur says he doesn't think Harry is an alien. Buster asks if Arthur has proof. Arthur says he doesn't need proof. Buster concedes that he doesn't really think Harry is an alien either, but he'll have his Bionic Bunny Alien Detector with him just to make sure.* Buster waits for Harry to arrive. He sits in his chair, the one with the horse painting beside it, and turns on the TV. On TV, seated at a seat under three spotlights are a blonde lady rabbit and an aardvarky man in a suit, who has a vaguely familiar accent. There is a flat screen monitor in front of them, and a box between the two of them. The man has one eyebrow raised as he says: Man on TV: Is that your... final answer? Buster has his Alien Detector directed at the TV. The need goes to the "Definite" red zone again, and the alarm goes "whoop whoop whoop whoop...." Buster notes that his Alien Detector works. Just then, the doorbell rings. Buster's Mom calls from the other room to Buster, saying that she isn't ready. She asks if Buster can answer the door. Buster walks to the front landing slowly, while alieny music plays in the background. Buster has his Alien Detector with him. Buster opens the door slightly, leaving the safety chain on. At the door is a perfectly normal looking rabbity guy in a suit and a trenchcoat. In fact, he looks like an adult version of Buster. Buster gasps. This must be Mom's boyfriend, Harry. Harry's smiling, and looks like a friendly chap... Harry must be wondering why Buster isn't letting him in. Harry: Knock knock! Buster: (pause) Who's there? Harry: Dennis! Buster: Dennis who? Harry: Dennis you going to invite me in? Buster laughs at this, and jumps up to unlock the safety chain, and in doing so, he drops his Alien Detector onto the rug behind him. Harry enters. Harry: Hi Buster, I'm Harry. Harry holds his hand out to shake, but as he walks in, he accidently steps on the Alien Detector, busting it. Harry apologizes. Buster says "hmmm" and makes his suspicious detective face. The three of them have dinner, almost as Buster imagined it -- the three of them sit around the dining room table. Harry is just finishing an amusing sports story that ends with the detail that when the batter slid home, all he had on was his boxer shorts. Buster finds this so hilarious that he almost shoots milk out of his nose. But not quite. Buster manages to control himself. Mom scolds him. Where are buster's manners? Buster says it's not his fault, the story was funny... Harry apologizes to Buster's Mom, explaining that he tells funny stories when he's nervous. Like Buster did in #50102 - "Double Dare", Harry nervously pulls at his shirt collar. Mom laughs. The end of Harry's tie is in his bowl of soup! He takes it out and holds it up, saying it probably looks better with crab chowder on it. Everyone laughs at that. Dinner is finished. Harry says it was delicious, and unveils a box for dessert -- he brought a cake! it's identical to the one in Buster's dream, down to the box reading "Villeneuve" on the top. Buster briefly imagines Harry opening it to reveal a button on the top... and pressing it...Mom gets up from the table to go get some plates for the cake, and Harry gets up to assist her. Buster is left alone at the dinner table with the boxed-up cake. Buster opens the box, but the cake appears to be just a normal cake with no push button. Just to be on the safe side, Buster sticks his finger into the center of the top of the cake. Buster takes his finger out of the cake, and licks it. Just then, Harry comes back. Harry looks anxious. Harry: You do like Boston Creme Pie, don't you?Buster says that actually, it's his favorite! Harry: Mine too!* * * Harry is about to leave. Mom and Buster (Buster in his pajamas) see him to the door. Buster shakes hands with Harry -- they both had a great time meeting each other. Buster leaves the grown-ups, and heads to his room for bed. Buster thinks to himself as he walks down the hall: Well, even if he is an alien, he sure is a nice one.He stops at his room door, and glances back at Mom and Harry. Mom and Harry are holding hands and laughing. Buster is not entirely happy all of a sudden. He enters his room with a sad look on his face. * * * Mom comes into Buster's bedroom to tuck Buster into bed. She asks what Buster though of Harry. Buster looks away from his Mom, and says that Harry's "ok". Mom looks sad, because that wasn't a particularly positive response -- she sighs, and looks a little unhappy. She says they don't have to have him over anymore... Buster says he didn't mean that -- Buster says that his concern is that now that Harry is around, Mom won't have as much time to spend with him. Mom reassures him that that is not going to be the case -- Buster will always remain the most special person in her life. That's a promise. They do their special handshake and hug. There's a hockey game at the arena. Buster, Bitzi, and Harry have great seats in the front row. It's an exciting game. Buster: Did you see that, Harry? What a shot! Mr. Ratburn just happens to be there as well, wearing a big foam #1 hand -- he says he's done some research, and tells the threesome not to feed rats to big lizards, as it makes them sluggish. Then he walks off. Buster's Mom doesn't know what to make of that. Buster and Harry think it's very funny. Bitzi: What on Earth is he talking about? Buster: Who knows, may he's... Buster and Harry: ...One of them!!! The two guys pull out matching Bionic Bunny Alien Detectors, and point them towards the departing Mr. Ratburn... The detectors start going "whoop whoop whoop whoop..." Harry: Yep, definitely an alien.The two guys close their eyes and beam. Big smiles. END. Usually Buster's Mom comes across as a big weirdo (i.e. Her odd behavior in the Christmas special is pretty typical.) But in this episode, it's shown that she's not entirely terrible. In fact, I liked this one, and don't have any complaints about it. Heck, even Muffy did a good job in this one. The "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" spoof? It'll date the episode as being circa 1999/2000, but that's not a big deal. Other episodes of Arthur have similar timely references -- the trendy 1995-era "Magic Eye" calendar in #13002 - "Arthur's New Year's Eve", the "digital hamster" from 1997 that was mentioned in #31302 - "Francine and the Feline". There are numerous other examples. Good stuff. One of my favorite episodes from this season. Rats! Arthur's attempt to gross Mr. Ratburn out might be slightly species-ist... and it shows that Mr. Ratburn hasn't much compassion for rats. Compare that with Binky in #10602 - "Arthur Accused!", more specifically, HFein's comment on that page. :) Offspring Something noteworthy about this episode is that Buster's imagination suggests that interspecies mating is perfectly viable in Arthur's universe. I'd wondered about this -- I need wonder no more. :) Category:Episodes Category:Warner, Home Video, 1998, VHS